Hello boys.

If you go down to Imperial War Museum North today, you’re in for a big surprise – because, just outside the dramatic Daniel Libeskind-designed museum, a new art installation has been unveiled. Six outsized photographs, each five metres high, illustrate six young marines. Shot close up, these are no posed and perfect shots: photographer Alastair Thain snapped the soldiers immediately after a gruelling training run – the hardship of which is etched in painful detail on their faces. Thain used some rather nifty technology to create the giant portraits, taking advantage of the same ultra-high definition format that NASA uses to photograph the earth from space. The result is a series of portraits that, although produced and displayed on a grand scale, are startlingly intimate: these are both tough-as-old-army-boots marines and six raw young lads – much-loved sons and brothers who seem, perhaps, too young to go to war.

The installation is the first in a series of commissions from Imperial War Museum North, although it’s not the first time that the Museum has dabbled in the arts. The Museum as a whole has one of the finest collections of war art in the world and has, since 1916, commissioned and collected art from some of the biggest names in the visual arts: Paul Nash, John Singer Sargent, Henry Moore and Stanley Spencer to name a few. The Museum has several other photography exhibitions in the pipeline – we’ll keep you posted.

Marines: Portraits by Alastair Thain is on display outside Imperial War Museum North until 18 October (free entry). The Museum hosts a ‘meet the artist’ event on 19 September (2.15pm, also free), where Thain talks about the Marines project in the context of a career that spans twenty years – a one-off chance to meet one of Britain’s most remarkable photographers.

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